There are many ways of measuring success. Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos are unlikely to play the half-time show at the SuperBowl, have any summer pop smash hits, or sign a lucrative advertising contract with Coca-Cola. But by more nuanced and perhaps more meaningful metrics, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt have got it sewn up. Not many indie musicians can claim multiple collaborations with Björk, stints on two of the most lionised labels on the scene (Thrill Jockey and Matador), and a string of fifteen critically acclaimed studio albums, none of which is remotely like any of the others, or like anything else for that matter. And their success extends beyond simply making great albums: Schmidt is a professor of music technology at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute and the president of Baltimore’s foremost experimental music festival, High Zero, while Daniel, an associate professor in English, is a contributing writer to Pitchfork and the author of multiple books on music.
The Matmos musical world is so varied and so creatively fertile that even describing it in the vaguest of terms – experimental electronica, for example – doesn’t come close to covering all the bases. They draw on elements of techno, minimalism, IDM and glitch, which seems like a sensible combination. But then things start getting gloriously unpredictable. There is something of the spirit of the Fluxus collective, of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle, even of La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music in the utterly unfettered nature of their experimentation, which never takes itself too seriously. Whether they are sampling the sounds of liposuction and limb amputation (A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure), setting up an unlikely marriage of hurdy-gurdy and electronica (The Civil War), or creating an album based on ESP and sensory deprivation (The Ganzfeld EP), they are never content to stand still.
For some musicians, concept equals constraint, but for Matmos each new idea seems to be the key that unlocks a whole new room full of ideas. Creativity is capable of exponential growth; every strange sound exists to be manipulated in new and exciting ways. On their latest project, Metallic Life Review, those strange sounds come from metal objects. If that sounds a bit like Lou Reed’s controversial, self-sabotaging Metal Machine Music, fear not: there is much greater depth and much greater accessibility to this record. Because whatever a Matmos album is, it is also always recognisable as music, and a bracing, moving, emotionally loaded kind of music at that.
Metallic Life Review consists of six tracks: five shorter pieces followed by the twenty-minute title track, which sprawls over the entirety of side two. Every track is assembled from entirely metal components. But this is not the sound of the junkyard. For every percussive clang, there is a moment of reflection, a hint of melody, an organic sense of movement. The first piece, Norway Doorway, begins with a gong’s crash and the creak of gates, then settles into a rhythmic, techno-influenced pattern. Itchiness meets meditative serenity with a hint of terror. At one point, the creaks come to resemble free-jazz horns blaring into some post-industrial night.
The Rust Belt begins with the sound of metal coming to life in a small and insect-like way, and then there are intimations of work, as in labour; alien pulses; giddy, dry techno beats. The sounds of a surrealist production line. It might be a comment on capitalism’s final days, but equally, it might come from the past or the future. There is something distinctly Lynchian about it in that respect, and they acknowledge their debt to Lynch in another track, The Chrome Reflects Our Image, which is brief and bright, a spooked music-box lullaby with an earthy undertow and a dreamlike middle section.
Then there is the chirpy, jittery Changing States, which again invokes the chime and skitter of a music box, though this time sped up. It has the feel of some of Aphex Twin’s gentler, more melodic moments (guest musician Owen Gardner’s glockenspiel helps on this front: it’s not all iron railings and squeaky gates). This mood continues on Steel Tongues, where the percussion seems malleable, almost liquid, and once more the melodies are gentle and lulling, albeit stranger and more stretched out than the rest of the album. But the long title track is where the real magic happens. Here, the duo lean hard into minimalist techniques, and into their improvisatory tendencies, creating a slow-building soundscape out of scrapes and clangs. This is music as geography, music as the unexplored terrain of the future. The great trick that Matmos pull off is managing to bring a distinctly human element, even a kind of warmth, to this terrain.
This second side is recorded live and largely improvised. The duo evidently revel in the spark that comes from intense collaboration. It’s a spark that has remained alight for nearly thirty years and shows no sign of dimming. Metallic Life Review is, above all else, a masterly repositioning of music into the realm of physical substance, where the inanimate becomes animate, and metal’s perceived harshness and coldness is alchemised into warmth and humanity. There’s something magical about that.
Matmos Life Review (June 20th, 2025) Thrill Jockey
Pre-Order Metallic Life Review:
Thrill Jockey: https://thrilljockey.com/products/metallic-life-review
Bandcamp: https://matmos.bandcamp.com/album/metallic-life-review